Oh, and that got George thinking.
George watched the workies finish their work. He pretended to talk to Sam, as an excuse for hanging about. Eventually, some of them left in their council workie van, and some of them headed into a cafe nearby for their lunch.
George walked over to the edge of the wet concrete, and crouched down, like he was going to fetch something from the wee bag at the bottom of the pram.
Then he reached over to the concrete and began to write ‘Sam’.
As he made the letter ‘S’, he thought about Sam in the future, coming to this very spot, with George. George would tell him that he wrote it there. And Sam would know that his old dad was mad about him, even back then. He’d know that when he was a baby, his dad was there for him and thinking about him. He’d bring his mates and point to the writing and say, ‘That there was my dad.’
Just as George was beginning the letter ‘A’, a workie came out the cafe and asked George just what the hell he thought he was doing.
George said he was doing nothing. It was no use lying, though. He’d been caught red handed.
‘I asked you what the fuck you think you’re doing, mate,’ said the workie.
George tried to turn the tables by making a big deal about the workie’s swearing. He stood up and said, ‘Here, don’t you fucking swear in front of my wean. What’s your name, you’re getting reported.’
‘Fuck yer wean,’ said the workie, then he pointed at the writing. ‘I’m gonnae have to lay that again.’
George couldn’t believe his ears. He charged over to the workie, right over the concrete, and started shouting. ‘What did you say? Fuck my wean, aye? Fuck my fucking …’
The workie chinned him.
George punched him back, and the two of them fell onto the wet concrete.
The workie was much bigger, and held George’s face down, then he shouted for his workie mates to phone the police.
The police eventually came, and tried to take George away, but they couldn’t. The workie had been holding George’s face in the concrete until the police turned up. Now the wet concrete was dry and rock solid, and the left side of George’s face was stuck.
The police tried to talk to George, to calm him down, to tell him that they’d get him out, but he booted them away. He was fucking livid about how he was being treated as a criminal.
The police told him to go and fuck himself then, and they left him there. Then they took Sam back to his mum.
The next day, Sam and his mum came to visit George, to give him something to eat and drink, but mostly to tell him that he was a dummy. George didn’t want Sam seeing him like that, and he didn’t want to be told that he was a dummy, so he told her to fuck off.
So she did.
She came back a few days later. Then a few weeks later. Then she never came back at all.
George watched the years go by from down there on the pavement, as people offered him the leftovers from their kebabs or a drink from their half-finished bottles of beer. Somebody would sometimes put their jacket over him to keep him warm, but by the time he woke up the next morning, it had been stolen.
About ten years later, George saw Sam go by with his schoolmates.
One of his mates pointed at George and said, ‘That’s your dad!’, and Sam laughed.
Sam didn’t know it really actually was his dad, and neither did his mate. His mate just said it in the way that a person might point at a tramp and say, ‘Oh look, there’s your dad.’
Vinnie was down in London for a few days. Down from Glasgow. It was lovely weather down in London. It always was. He’d been down before, and even when the weather wasn’t that nice, like if it was cloudy or pissing down, it was always better than whatever it was up the road.
Today, though, it was lovely, and all the Londoners were dressed for the occasion, with their T-shirts and shorts and bare legs.
When Vinnie got in a taxi, it was one of the first things the taxi driver mentioned.
‘Lovely weather, isn’t it?’ said the driver.
‘Aye,’ said Vinnie. ‘It’s roasting.’
The driver smiled at Vinnie in the mirror. ‘You from Scotland, yeah?’
‘Aye, just down for the day.’
‘Down for a spot of sightseeing?’ asked the driver.
‘Aye,’ said Vinnie.
But that wasn’t the truth. He didn’t want to talk about it, because he knew he’d come across as stupid. He wasn’t down for a spot of sightseeing, he was actually down for a concert. But he’d made an arse of it.
He was supposed to be seeing Art Garfunkel.
There was only one UK date on his world tour, and that was London, tonight. Or so Vinnie had thought. But it turned out it was last night.
Vinnie had found out when he got off the train. The second he got off, he saw an Art Garfunkel poster in the station, advertising the tour. He walked over to it, because he’d never seen the poster before, and because Art Garfunkel was the reason he was down. He saw that the London date was on Thursday, not Friday. And next to it were all these other dates.
He didn’t know there were other UK dates. He’d only ever known about a tour from the Art Garfunkel forum. Somebody on the forum mentioned that the only UK date was in London.
But, looking back, they maybe just asked if Art’s only UK date was London. They were maybe just asking, rather than saying that it was.
Or it could be that the person just said that they themselves were going to see the concert in London.
So Vinnie had gone ahead and searched for ‘Art Garfunkel’ and ‘London’, and up came the London date. Just London. And Vinnie took that as confirmation that Art was only going to be in London. So he booked it. Then he came all the way down from Glasgow to London, got off the train, and saw the poster with the dates.
And there on the poster was a date for Glasgow.
It had already passed, it was last Wednesday. Vinnie could have made it. He dearly would have loved to have made it. But now he wasn’t going to see him in either Glasgow or London, and he felt so fucking stupid.
He loved Art Garfunkel.
Really, what a talented singer and songwriter.
Vinnie wasn’t sure if it was Art who wrote all the songs in Simon & Garfunkel, but he must have. He was the main singer. Plus the fact that he left the band to go solo and then went on to write ‘Bright Eyes’, whereas Simon, the short one, disappeared without a trace. That tells you everything you need to know about Art.
Vinnie couldn’t wait to see him live. But that just wouldn’t be happening, not tonight anyway.
It didn’t piss him off, though. He was used to it. He was used to things like this happening. But he couldn’t laugh it off either. And he didn’t want to go into it all with the driver.
So when the driver asked him if he was down for some sightseeing, he just said ‘Aye’.
The driver nodded and started driving, looking out the window to the side. He wasn’t looking at other cars, though. He was looking